Pages

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

A New Year's Realization, Not A Resolution

Who you are and what you do today is most likely who you
will be and what you will do tomorrow. That thought occurred to me the
other day, and it kind of stuck in my head. This can be a positive or a
negative thought, it’s up to each of us to decide. I choose to think that it is
in my power—now, at this moment—to work on becoming the person I wish to be.

Too often we make our path in life more difficult than it
needs to be. We set ourselves up for failure by demanding of our future selves
what we are incapable of achieving today. We set unrealistic goals for
ourselves because we do not wish to see ourselves as we truly are. Our true
selves, we tell ourselves, the ones that we are destined to become, are out
there somewhere in the future, and we wait for them as we would a knight in
shining armor.

But that knight in armor never comes. He does not exist
because we have not been working on developing him. We have alienated our true
powers, the ones that we possess in the here and now, the power to work with
the time and talent that is immediately before us.

We often do not wish to see ourselves for who we truly
are, and instead create an ego ideal of ourselves, some flawless creature that
will someday emerge from the cocoon that we currently are. When we do not live
up to that impossible idea of ourselves, we then create another image of
ourselves: that of a worthless sinner who is unworthy of any success or
happiness. Both images are false, both equally damaging. They tend to work together,
alternating in a cycle.

It is a cycle we must break if we are to achieve any real
self-satisfaction in life. We are neither the helpless child nor the fully
arrived adult. We are somewhere in the middle, in a constant state of becoming
more, but never quite arriving. We will never be perfect since as we approach
our goals we will see more goals beyond them. There is no promised land, no end
point, but there is the constant opportunity to go further than we have before,
perhaps further than we even believed possible.

It takes a degree of faith, I suppose. We need to believe
in the process before we can fully commit to it. We need to taste a degree of
success before we understand how it can come about. Or else we can learn about
success by watching the behavior of another and learning from it. Lastly, there
may be someone in our lives who believes in us even when we ourselves cannot. I
don’t imagine that anyone can go through life being successful without a mix of
all three of those factors. And once we have earned a degree of success
ourselves, we are in a position to inspire and believe in others. If there is a
promised land, we will have to work together to get there.

So I have not made any New Year’s resolutions. I am
merely trying to live this day the way I would like to see myself living my
future. The opportunity is there, why not take it? Oh, and let me just end this
post by saying: “I believe in you.”

Find My Writing Here

Shell Shock

The Amazing Morse

The Association

Perchance To Dream

Seven Stones

About Me

The Amazing MorseThe Amazing Morse is a blog dedicated to my works of fiction, primarily my first series, The Amazing Morse. My postings will be either from my own perspective or that of my character Dave Morse.